To run ahead the timeline a touch, Ethra, Terra, and Tiffi manage to find the log-in platform before the other, heavier people do-though they're slowed down by a mysterious cart-crash which appeared in front of them-and Terra gives the keywords to the gate.

When they arrive...they find it to be an abandoned town they land in, full of decrepit buildings and old dust. It simply exuded decay.

There were no monsters, yet, but it seemed only a matter of time in this place. Where to begin searching...

Meanwhile, the old man accosted a certain player, asking for help with some skeletons at his farm. Cerr readily agreed, and the two of them went on with the new quest.

Once there, the old man revealed himself to be a Polearm, and a passing good one...he also spoke of how the city was once attacked by skeletons, strong enough to kill the old 'Watchers' of the city. The city's Gods, in other words. And he mentioned how he was once one -of- those Watchers...but the conversation was cut short there.

Skeletons were attacking. Five of them, three man-sized and the other two more like children, who seemed to hang back. And while the old man dived in the fray, Cerr stayed back -just- long enough to cast one of the spells from her old days...

Only to find out she was too short on MP as of yet. So she instead grabbed her dagger, healing the both of them as they needed it...the old guy dismantled two of the skeletons himself, and Cerr managed the last. The child skeletons cried after each was destroyed, one of them even rushing at Cerr afterwards...which the old man caught, and broke in a single swing.

The other child, however, began begging...pleading for her life, saying that it was the fault of the 'big guys' that they were attacking, claming that the Gods themselves were forcing them into it. She pleaded for her own unlife, crying without tears...

The old man? He busied himself with poking and knocking about the destroyed skeletons, making sure they -stayed- destroyed.

"Hey! Think things through! Haste makes waste, y'know. We're safer in numbers. Let's pair off or something. If one person can complete this quest with difficulty, two can with ease, and NONE of us have our old levels. Why risk it?"

Alex stands there, waiting for a reply. If he can get company, all the better. He's too fragile to try stuff by himself, especially since he's using a damn bulky scythe.

"Our GM said this was a competition of sorts. If someone wants to come with me --" at this point, Raze sends a look to the scythe wielding polearm "-- feel free to follow the trail of corpses. Assuming the monsters that we all know are going to pop up don't run away from me." His tone was equal parts confidence and semi-sarcasm.

With this he drew his axe -- a crude, newbie two-handed axe -- and walked toward the nearest building to the north. The top hinge was rusted apart, with the bottom very nearly following it. Rather than just pushing it away, Raze whacked the remaining hinge with his axe and kicked it out of the way, mostly to test his handle on the controls. Door disposed of, he peeked inside.

This is when all hell broke loose. In front of Tiff, Terra, and Ethra, skeletons began pouring out of the buildings. A few of them were armed with proper blades, many more were unarmed...and some had torn off one of their arms and were using the limb as a club. There was about twenty of them altogether.
Raze, Makai, and Alexander, on the other hand, would find their characters being teleported elsewhere. It was fairly dark, and a fairly large room. It was rather sparse, except for the eight-foot skeleton about to kill them all...
"An amusing diversion, Sorune. Well done."

"I rather thought so...think any of them will actually survive?"

"If they do, they definitely -deserve- a reward...think up ways to slow them down still. I think I'll go down myself..."

"You know what? I don't care!" Tiffi yelped, retreating behind Terra. She trusted in her friend's defensive capabilities, as well as the fact that Terra would serve as a better meat-shield.

"Look, we're the mages! We better try doing something before we die!" she exclaimed, frantically searching her memory for techniques that would work. She was rather rusty.

"Remember if the cure spell hurts 'em or not?" she asked, making a brief gesture as she remembered a spell.

"Stone!"

The effect was nowhere near as flashy as it might have been if Tiffi were a higher level, but small rocks erupted out of the earth, forming a crude defensive shield about them. Not terribly high, as the skeletons could easily go over them, but enough to hinder the undead at least. Those near enough to the stone wall might even get hit by rocky shrapnel.

Terra simply shouted, "No, but keep 'em in reserve if I need healing!" as she activated her special ability 'Beloved Defender', making sure that the skeletons focused solely on her...what Ethra said struck a chord in her, but she shrugged it off. At the end of Reyta, there was just that hacker...
As the skeleton lumbered towards them, they could see that it had a large club, possibly a dinosaur femur, and it was swinging it at them.

"Crude and primative, but effective..." thought the man weilding a sharpened rock attached to a stick as a weapon.

With that, he charges forward to meet the skeleton before he focuses on his less-hearty allies, swinging his axe at the skeleton's spine where his torso would be if it hadan actual body, in the meantime bracing his legs and shoulder to take a blow from that club for the team.

Coming out of his panic, Ethra composed himself and smiled apologetically, "Sorry, Wingra can't fly that high, I already did try."

He took a moment to ponder the situation...

Materializing her starting weapon finally, he hadnt sprinted around with THAT thing at least. Anything that climbed over the shallow stone wall he tried to knock back with a thrust, effectively causing it to crash into whatever others were behind it. This was of course assuming this weak wingra body had the strength.

The axeman's effort, while not completely useless, was ignored while the skel focused on -him- instead. Perhaps they'd need to work together...
"Tiff! Try combining fire and earth! Or Fire and Cure! They're supposed to be weak against fire!" Terra yelled loudly while smashing skeleton skulls in, making good use of that non-newbie equipment on them. They seemed a lot more interested in her than in Ethra anyway, and she seemed to be doing a good job at hitting them before they hit her.
"Dum de dum...wonder how long they'll be? I look forward to playtime..."

Raze ducked under a club swing aimed at his head. The thing wasn't too accurate...

The next blow came at his torso, however, and that was kinda like shooting at the broad side of a barn. Raze parried the blow with the shaft of his axe, beads of sweat beginning to form on his forehead as he saw the crude wooden material beginning to splinter.

He decided a killing blow wasn't going to happen for a while, and changed his strategy. He shifted his weight forward the throw his skeleton adversary off balance, then aimed a powerful chop at the thing's shoulder, hoping to hack off an arm and make that club a little harder to swing.

And, out of nowhere, Alex Christ dives in and starts making like a cuisinart with his scythe. He'll be damned if he's going to miss out on slicing things to pieces because someone else beat him to it. And think of the experience!

He whirls around a bit, twisting the scythe to and fro around his head and chest, and makes a very stylish (though not very wise) dive-by attack against the skeleton that is currently tangling with Raze. The move is supposed to go through the skeleton's ribcage.

Once he's on the other side of the thing, he whirls around to face the back of it. There's nothing quite like being fast to pull off some really wierd crap. Too bad he can't use his Blade of Carnage. Then he wouldn't even wonder about teaming up with other people.

The skeleton doesn't seem to be folding under the onslaught of the two warriors...but it doesn't kill them immediately, either. The axe bites deep into its shoulder, and the funky stylings of the other take out quite a few ribs but it doesn't seem to mind it at all, taking a swing for the faster, and thus more vulnerable, Alexander. It didn't have much chance of hitting, but it would -hurt- if it connected. Being dead must do wonders for your pain threshold.
Meanwhile, Terra and Ethra were holding up quite admirably to the skeleton horde, already having destroyed half of them...though Terra was a little worse for wear, she kept fighting.

With the skeleton focusing on his ally, Raze sets his sights on that shoulder again. Judging from how deep he got with his first blow, another would probably cause that arm to come off completely... At least, that's what he was hoping for.

Raising his axe a bit higher, and taking a few more second to take aim in the hopes that his agile ally would be able to hold out, Raze takes another tremendous chop at the skeleton's shoulder.

Tiffi gave a small groan, wondering why anyone would make a Wingra fighter....

Well, to have fun, I guess. Isn't that the whole point of the game? she thought. Really, she couldn't criticize someone about it; this was a game and it didn't really matter.

"Healing flames!" she shouted, clasping her hands together to gather the mana. Tiffi then twirled theatrically- it was a game after all, which was meant to be fun, and she did like looking nifty- and flung her hands out, sending an arc of flames laced with healing magics against the skeletal horde.

Tiff's spell worked like a charm. Her MP was shot, but she managed to take out all but a few skeletons that were hidden in the back...which Terra and Ethra handled with a few good thwacks over the head. Plus, hey, two level-ups for each of them.

"Great work Tiffi...now, where do we go from here? I don't want to wait where we can be ambushed so easily..."
[hr]
Raze's axe did the job, cutting through the arm of the skeleton and making it drop the club. However, he wouldn't be able to dodge the counter from it, a simple sweeping motion from its remaining arm that would easily knock him off his feet. And take off half his HP. Owch.

Raze took the blow like a man -- after all, half of his HP was still probably more than a lot of the other characters would have. Though he didn't intend to let himself suffer another blow like that...

As such, he backed up a bit and shot a smirk to Alex before shifting the grip on his axe so that he could better parry with the shaft, putting the bulk of his effort into defense.

Christ scampers around in a circle, preparing himself for another pass. Halfway there, he gets an idea.

Let's see if I can pull this off. Bend the knees, hold the scythe like so... He turns the weapon down into an underhanded grip so the blade is behind him and pointed at the ground.

How did my old Macro go? Hmm... I looted that one line from Valkyrie Profile... and then... yeah. Shift backwards slightly...

His center of gravity folds back a bit, stretching out one of his legs and flexing his knee on the other. Then, he lets out his embarassing (but reasonably cool) dialogue choice for the move that might not have made it through the conversion. After all, he's only level one and so he can't expect to have his better techs, but something like this might still work.

Mmmkay. Here goes nothing.

"Ye must desire respite from thy empty existence. You shall have it, and the name of Christ shall be emblazoned upon thy soul!"

Alex Christ unfolded himself, sprang out at the skeleton, and made the wide-arc movement that used to initiate one of his lowbie techs. If he's lucky, it'll still work. If not, then he's making a damn fool of himself. Hopefully the line of the scythe will shatter the ribcage of the Skeleton in an upward motion, and if that fails, the sudden jerk of the blade from inside of the creature's torso will hopefully unbalance it some.

"Yer fuckin' kiddin' me, lass. No way in the blue hells would I adopt undead beasties." The old man was scowling at the mere idea, while the little...girl was still shaking.
"To one of the buildings...yeah, that works. If there's anything inside them, then I think Ethra and I can handle things while your MP recovers, Tiff." With that, Terra led the way to the building!
Chris was very lucky indeed, pulling off the move...barely. It took all of his MP to do it, and he hadn't had much of that. The skeleton, big though it was, started falling apart. Not quite dead yet, though...

"Hell, if he can do all that, maybe I should try something special myself... But if I screw up, I'm dead...

...Aw hell, might as well. Not like I have anything else to use MP on yet."

With that, Raze shifted the grip on his axe again, and while the skeleton was distracted by Alex, began to plan his first coup de grace.

He started spinning, slowly at first, but then picking up speed, using the heavy axehead to add to his momentum. When the though he was going fast enough, he sent himself towards the skeleton, the axeblade level with its skull.

Good! Let's see if I can combo into his move. I don't have techs left until I rest, but a well-placed attack might get us a combo effect anyway. Unless the mechanics have changed. I don't remember.

Getting himself back in stride and recovering from his Royal Crescent maneuver, he moves to flank the skeleton and tries to time his attack so that he strikes a different part of the skeleton at the same time.

Alex Christ is looking a lot less awkward. He's getting used to the interface through the fight, maybe. At any rate, he's hefting his scythe more steadily and smoothly than he was at the very start.

Damn, this fight would already be over if I could just USE that Blade of Carnage. Or if I had my old Adamantium Foil. Shucks, better make do.

Terra looked back at Tiffi, shaking her head a bit as she said 'Healing Light' and healed her own stupid wounds. "I still have a spell or two from my old character...you should too, actually. If we run into something big, can you still use Faerie Fire?" She seemed cheered up quite a bit. Perhaps smashing skeletons by the truckload helped with stress.
"I...I'm Sandra...my sister is...she was too far gone." The skeleton replied to Cerr, looking at her sister that was, unfortunately, smashed by the errant blow from the older warrior. He had gone back to his work of making certain the skeletons wouldn't have enough pieces to come back to, even if they revived.
The Axeman and the Polearm, while not quite getting a combo, -do- manage to finally take down the skeleton, club and all. It's quite dramatic, what with them tearing it apart bone by bone, splitting the skull, and it finally falling apart at the end. Raze might note that he -could- use that gigantic club the thing had been wielding...and they'd also notice that their 'friend' Makai was gone. How strange.
Makai, Makai, poor Makai. He'd been dumped back into the main streets of the town, left alone. Why? Who knows...

As Raze felt his axe hit and cleave through the skeleton's skull, and felt what he hoped was Alex's scythe going at a lower part of the skeleton, he came out of his spin, reeling around awkwardly for a moment. Once his balance was back, he looked to the scattered remains of his foe and smiled.

"Hell yeah! Owned, bitch! HAAAH!"

With that, his eyes fell to the club. He sheathed his axe in his backsheath and picked it up, giving it a few test swings while turning to Alex.

"Well, seems we make quite the team, my friend. Tell me, was your awkwardness in town just a ruse or are you just that much more in control when you've got a bit of adrenaline pumping?" His voice at the last part, even through his deepening filter, is obviously sarcastic.

Terra nodded, and as they step into the old building...they see something completely different. There's a -large- man inside, probably around four hundred pounds and six feet tall, none of it muscle, absently chewing on a stick. He's got a kitchen knife in each hand, and seems to be carrying quite a few kitchen supplies on his back. And what's he say when he sees the little crew? "Well done, all of you. Now there's only one more trial to get your new possessions...and that's me. I'm Gojo Cho, master chef, at your service."
Raze could -feel- that club was more powerful than his axe. What serindipity, eh? A door also opened at the back of the room, flooding the area with light. They should probably get a move on if they want their stuff.

"A little of both? It's partly due to the fact that I'm mostly a swordsman and the only sword I have is a sword I can't use right now. Plus the interface is just a LITTLE bit different. You wanna rest a second? That move sucked out my MP."

The new animations are making the character look winded, as though he's a little tired, though the player himself doesn't seem worse for the wear from the action.

"Actually, we need to get a move on. The other team might be ahead of us since there were more of 'em. Though I would appreciate it if you passed me a healing item a' some sort..."

With that, Raze set the club to a comfortable but readied position on his shoulder and started toward the new opening. His wounds were still bleeding, but not badly. Possibly his high constitution score allowing him to heal quickly.

He started toward the new door that had opened, beckoning to Alex over his shoulder.

"Mmmkay, though right now it stings. I didn't stock up before heading out."

Alex tosses a small box to Raze- it's blue and marked with the red medical cross.

"Use it if you absolutely have to. Haven't got many."

And with that he shoulders his scythe and sets himself into a running mode- he can move faster when using a weapon more his style, but at the moment he covers only an okay (for a Polearm) amount of ground.

It still feels vaguely wrong to be fighting a chef. More than vaguely, in fact; there was a certain expectation if you were facing a fighter, a mage, or a monster, but a chef? While Gojo certainly looked formidable, there was no... no sense of glory or romance attached to defeating a master chef in combat.